Before Odell Beckham Jr. made the largest investment decision of his life, he had dinner with his business partner Ajay Sangha.
"If you're happy, and you think this is going to grow, then I'm doing it," Beckham said at the table. "You tell me yes or no."
Sangha said yes. They closed the deal in March of 2021-an investment in Jaxxon, a fast-growing men's jewelry company, that dwarfed any other investment Beckham had done. How much money are we talking here? He won't say, but it's at least double any other investment they've made, and they've done around 25 of them. And it was enough to keep Sangha up at night.
"I mean, it's not my money," Sangha says now, reflecting on the moment. "It's a lot of money, right? It's a lot of fucking money. And it's a venture investment. It could go down the drain. I didn't sleep for a month and a half.”
But Beckham? He slept fine. "I'm okay with taking this risk in hopes that it pays off," Beckham says now. "And if it didn't, I was going to beat him up and then we'd move on to the next one."
Yes, of course, Beckham has some major advantages to help him feel this way. As one of the largest stars in football-with a new Super Bowl ring, a history of lucrative NFL contracts, a Nike deal, and myriad other arrangements we'll get into later-this man has some cash to play with. He's also grown comfortable in high-stakes situations, where hesitation is the difference between catching or missing a one-handed, career-defining touchdown.
But the question that really matters is: How did he come to feel that way? Not about the money, but about trusting someone else to make large decisions with him, and to start thinking about what might come later instead of what must come now. Because that's not how he used to think. And getting there was about more than business or football.
It was about reshaping the way he thought about risk and trust.
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